From saving lives to reaching out to hungry customers, technology helps businesses perform

Employees talk about what makes their companies some of the best places to work in southeastern Wisconsin.
Mike De Sisti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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Flight For Life pilot Anders Vetch steps out of a Flight For Life helicopter as mechanic JJ Hoffmann prepares to fold in the blades after the helicopter landed on the roof of the Wisconsin Center.(Photo: Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)Buy Photo

Flight for Life needs to be as prepared as possible, Commo said, because people’s lives are at stake. One major tech innovation the organization has tapped into is a mobile- and web-based communication application. The app helps Flight for Life coordinate with dispatchers as well as the hospital where the patient is being taken.

Commo said some 911 centers exclusively use the web application, and it is likely more centers will adopt the technology.

Flight for Life's helicopters themselves haven’t changed — two of the four were built in the 1980s — but inside, just about everything is new: GPS, ground-avoidance warning systems and satellite weather connections are only a few of the many technological improvements that Commo said empower Flight for Life.

“We really are in the business of speed,” Commo said.

Using technology to deliver service efficiently and with care, though, isn't just the purview of organizations involved in critical health care situations.

Restaurant operator Black Shoe Hospitality, for example, was an early adopter of social media and it has been refining its use of such services since they were in their infancy.

John Buchel, the company's community outreach coordinator, said some online applications have been easier to embrace than others. When Black Shoe opened its first restaurant, Maxie’s, in 2007, Facebook and Twitter were still in the first years of their lives.

Because of this, Buchel said, Black Shoe’s businesses were among the early restaurants to use social media marketing. Buchel runs Black Shoe’s social media accounts, and he said platforms like Facebook and Instagram have helped grow the business.

Buchel said the company began putting more energy into social media as use of the technology expanded.

An example: When online review service Yelp first came on the scene, Buchel said, a lot of restaurateurs resented it because they felt all their hard work was being overshadowed by negative online reviews.

“We’ve grown up in how we deal with Yelp and other user-generated review sites,” Buchel said.

He said Black Shoe now uses the app to better address customer concerns. When somebody writes a less-than-shining review of one of the three restaurants, Buchel said he can reach out to the person directly and save a potential loss of business.

No Wait, which was acquired by Yelp in 2017, is a mobile app that allows diners, for example, to reserve a table at their favorite brunch location so they don't have to worry about long weekend wait times.

“We made a big effort to embrace (No Wait) because we knew this was a pain-point for guests,” Buchel said. “We had a reputation that we had a wait, and people had already decided they weren’t going to try us because of it.”

He said the application is not perfect, but "when it works, it really works."

In the end, he said, it's important to remember that technology isn't a goal in itself. Rather, it exists to strengthen relationships with customers.